It is always now!: Yeghegnadzor and mountain lingerie

I enjoyed walking down from Noravank through the impressive canyon that is also a climbing paradise.

Some information.

The lower part of the canyon.

Also in the lower part of the canyon.

For the last kilometers I was picked up by a car of local people. They connected me with the gentle local people in the restaurant at the crossing with the highway. There they helped me to travel further. It was complicated to find a kind of a taxi but they phoned around. After a nice hour watching a Russian TV show and drinking tea they organized a driver who was willing to drive me to Yeghegnadzor not further to the south. So the stop in Yeghegnadzor was not planned. But well, I love these unforeseen situation because these are the moments to learn about a country.

While driving through to the scenic valley of the Arpa river the
Jaan Kuman Instrumental Ensemble
is a good choice to listen to.

Yeghegnadzor is a small town and I noticed immediately that something is wrong with it. It was so quiet. The stores were open but there were almost no customers. In the hotel I talked with the young english-speaking staff and what they told me explained the situation: People live close to poverty but more important is that they don't have a perspective. Most of the men are working abroad in Russia. Only because of their money the woman and children who stay in Armenia can survive. They were very unhappy about this. The families are not united and the work life in Russia seem to be hard. There was the fear that Russia could send their men back to protect their job market and people also feared the high corruption in Armenia. All talks were therefore quite depressing. I cannot describe it properly with words but even before I could talk I got the blues of the locals just by walking around. Once more it corroborated that it is not that hard to live a simple live but to have no perspective. It was sad to see that the people in Armenia's south didn't have one.

Hotel Arpa, where I stayed. A nice one but without
other guests that time.

This building besides the hotel was used as youth club.
There was a small party going on that evening.

View down the Mikoyan street. By the way, Anastas Mikoyan was
for one year the nominal head of the Soviet union while his brother
Artem was the famous aircraft designer.

The town is surrounded by high mountains.

The bank buildings in Armenia were always either new
or perfectly renovated.

A new school or university building (I think).

This is the junction with the highway. Note the traffic enforcement
camera on the right side. The road is so bad that I wonder how one can
drive too fast. Note also that this is the main road connecting the south
of the country with the rest. Incredible that it is in such a state!

View from the highway junction to the town.

Leaving the town the next day was not easily possible because of the problematic of the buses I described. In the hotel they had an illustrated book with pictures of the surrounding. So why not visit one of the places in the book? I asked the lady at the reception how to go to Smataberd to see also another sight than only churches. She organized not a taxi but her boyfriend that he could also earn some money. We drove up a narrow road with his old Lada. Although that Smataberd is only 20 km from Yeghegnadzor he had never been there. He insisted to climb with me up to the fortress but had to give up after a few hundred meters because he had only normal street shoes and the ground was wet and hard to walk on. With good shoes climbing up is not difficult and the view from the top is fantastic.

This deserves another song: Gramatik - A Bright Day

The houses in the valley around Shatin.

This explains why street shoes were unsuitable.

It is also an option to visit the Tsakhats Kar monastery too.

The weather was so amazing. It changed quickly and one could see the full beauty of the mountains only for some moments. Like lingerie makes a woman more attractive: You cannot see all but enough to play cinema in your head.